


Honor the Fallen

by theswearingkind



Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: War of the Damned
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, M/M, Possible Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 05:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I ask only that you live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honor the Fallen

**Author's Note:**

> Written because my opinions on how the series is going to end have changed dramatically from even a couple of weeks ago, and I needed to work my feelings out. Oddly enough, I feel way better after writing this.

When Nasir falls, it is in a shower of blood ripped from Roman shits, the memory of hundreds dead carried with him, the light in his eyes the light of Rome’s reckoning; he has made them pay for the nineteen years he lost to the collar, for the brand he yet bears in hidden place, for the mother and father whose faces he cannot recall, the brother whose name is but distant memory.

When Nasir falls, it is to a half-dozen soldiers at once, surrounding him on all sides, and Agron would be proud that Nasir requires so many to bring him low, that Nasir’s spear has robbed more men of life than yet remain standing on field of battle, that while the Romans still discount the house slave the warrior makes them bleed.

He would be proud, but in the moment, none of that matters, because Nasir still falls.

Agron kills them all.

*

When Agron followed Crixus, he thought never again to see Nasir’s face, never again to hold the man in his arms. The thought burned like wound sealed by fire: a fierce, sharp pain, but something definitive, and the knowledge of Nasir yet living was soothing balm. His life for Nasir’s, the lesser for the greater; it was bargain well struck. 

Nasir’s life now pools around him, red and hot and wet, and Agron tries desperately to staunch the flow, to afford them yet more time. He thinks, suddenly, of Naevia, the fury in her voice as she faced him after Crixus was lost in the mines: _Each day I begged the gods to see him to my arms. And this is how they fucking answer? By allowing his touch only to be ripped from it forever?_

Nasir gasps, shuddering, and blood trickles from his mouth. His eyes fix on Agron’s face, and they are calm and bright, the eyes of a man who has done all that he set out to do and then some. 

“This time,” Nasir manages, voice weak as he has never been in life, “this time you stay—” 

Nasir’s words lose breath before he can finish them, and Agron cannot do this, he _cannot_.

*

“Wait for me,” Agron says, pressing bloodied kiss to Nasir’s mouth, because it is already too late to ask that Nasir remain living. “Wait for me, my warrior, I will follow soon.” 

Agron means it to soothe, to offer comfort in last moments, but Nasir’s gaze grows suddenly fierce once more. “No,” he chokes out, and there is the fire again, the strength Agron loves above all things in this world. “Agron, _no_.”

“Do not fear,” Agron assures him. “I will send many a Roman to their doom before I join you.” For what other objection can there be?

“No,” Nasir repeats, voice wilder, and when he speaks again his words carry the weight of all they have been to one another. “I ask—I ask only that you live.”

The world loses sight about him, and Agron feels his heart seize in chest, hears Naevia’s voice again: _and this is how they fucking answer?_

“Promise me, Agron,” and it is the tone of voice that saved the Cilician’s life, that saw Laeta moved from hated prisoner to uneasy ally. “I will hear the words.”

*  
The war is over; the rebellion is finished; they have lost. Here, Agron is general no longer.

Still, he can but follow command.

“Yes,” he says, _promises_.

Nasir falls.


End file.
